i attach a few preemptive apologies to this post: apologies if the topic strays from what some believe to be appropriate discussion areas for the list, apologies for leaping to a soapbox to exclaim a personal position. i am writing to inquire why there is so much silence regarding a topic that deserves a bit more than silence. the historian in me wonders what future historians will think when they look back into the archives of lists like air-l and notice that while the world is on fire, there were only a handful of posts about it. why is this? i run a resource center which puts me in communication with a ton of international scholars, most of whom like us focus their academic interests on the internet and digital culture. over the last few weeks, i've received a few dozen emails asking me about americans' positions about the impending war with iraq. i'm very nervous about being some kind of spokesperson for a country as large and diverse as the US but i'm equally nervous about some of the ideas they are getting from the press. (example: today's washington post reports a poll saying 7 out of 10 americans support a war with iraq, with or without UN support.) i think it's important to say that i live and thrive in seattle, a particularly progressive (in some ways) city that has a history of political action -- in the last few years along: the anti-WTO protests; indymedia.org, which started in part (please: if i'm wrong here someone correct me) in seattle; curbside recycling, which has spread to much of the country -- and cultural creation: jimi hendrix; grunge bands like nirvana and pearl jam; and in nearby olympia, the riot grrl movement. so perhaps my reality is tweaked (*always* a possibility, i freely and proudly admit), but here in seattle there is a massive anti-war movement: seen in the streets, on campuses, on storefronts and homes, and with furious and earnest INTERNET USE to organize, education, mobilize, and give counsel. while the mainstream media may portray americans as standing firmly behind their president select, there are massive numbers that think this war (and the series of wars that many of us fear will follow), the way in which it has been developing unilaterally, and the global disarray it will produce are insane, dangerous, undemocratic, and, well, suicidal. through talking with friends and colleagues -- via interpersonally, through the phone and letters, and especially OVER THE INTERNET -- i have come to believe that it is not only in seattle. such beliefs can be found throughout the country, as well as of course throughout the world. with HELP FROM THE INTERNET i have learned that many global protestors understand this: recent protests seem to me to be more anti-bush than anti-american but i could be wrong. i would love to hear more about this from anyone who cares to post. if some believe this has little to do with internet research, i offer, again, my preemptive apologies. but i think we are missing a massively important topic here: as my friend jay babcock has taught me, this war -- if and when it happens -- will be the first (or one of the first, that can certainly be debated) INTERNET WAR. by the phrase, jay means and i agree the first major war that will be conducted since a critical mass has gone online. what are the repercussions? it's possible -- i say possible; please save the "you technological determinist!" flames -- that the net's distributive nature and massive user base will allow a more free flow of information from the front lines. if and when the war begins, will we see gifs and jpegs of killed civilians, bombed out cities and villages, and general horror that will not be shown on CNN and fox news? will we read -- in the form of emails, list postings, and blogs, to name a few -- first hand accounts of what's going down rather than the canned press releases being fed to american (and others?) media outlets? perhaps an early example of this -- one that i, as a jew who has grave reservations about israeli imperialism, am a bit nervous to post in fear of fostering misguided anti-semitism -- can be found here: <http://www.palsolidarity.org/rachel.htm>. any interest in discussing this? peace, david
hello david, you've described your impression of most global protest being anti-bush, not anti-american.. I tend to agree on that. Here in Germany, i can't sense a strong anti-american public opinion, even though it might be portrayed otherwise by mainstream media outside of Germany itself- one point I am not sure of. What I DO feel though is great resignation, shared by many people here in Berlin- in fact, almost everyone i know.
I was in Italy recently and was approached by several people during my time there--a Filipino seminarian, two Dutch couples over dinner, some of the Italians--regarding my feelings as an American on the prospect of war. It was clear this is seen as George W. picking a fight, not something the Europeans (nor I ) can readily comprehend. I never experienced anti-American sentiment, although I was always prepared for it. Seems that's not the case--it is the American government, not the American people, who are perceived as the problem.After all, it wasn't elected officials who died in the Trade Center either. Ubiquitous to Italy were the "bandiera della pace", the Peace flags. Large rainbow-striped flags that proclaim "Peace" in Italian over the stripes. I brought several home with me and they are now gracing the walls of colleges, schools and parishes in my town. Pace, --djs
David, at 2.10 am 3/20/2003 I am checking my email to find your posting.. which list approriate or not.. touched me... the deadline has passed and for weeks no one listened... to no protest to no official to no inspector... nada... I am angry, fearful, outraged about this.... pro peace - certainly not a friend of Saddam... and his philantropists of earlier years... Reagan and Bush 1..... so yes the INternet has helped to spread the word, get people on the street... but did it really help to prevent the war .. or to rather blame it on them afterwards... I am not sure... we are certainly not anymore in the realm of the unknown.. but what did we win... sorry for the fatalism here... when the first shot will be fired... collegues of mine will be getting a phone call to get their butts in gear to rush to the newsroom to cover the whole thing...online... as if somebody cares in Germany at this time of the day... I may be covering for them tommorrow... despite a week off..... so that is the Internet as well.... seem to have lost my clue here... anyway... I am with David, but sceptical if the INterent really does make a change.. or only for us... that we fell better... disillusioned... nilz
I would not be at all surprised if many, maybe most, subscribers to air-l are on other lists in which the conversation is non-stop about the war (regardless of whether that is "on topic" for those lists). Perhaps air-l is a haven of on-topic-ness. Maybe very few people are paying attention to air-l right now. Maybe, as I have seen with some of my students, some people are "warred out" and don't wish to talk about it. I also expect that people are otherwise engaged about this war in ways _not_ involving the internet, whether they are seeking peace or not when it comes to this war. And there are likely many people right now seeking news, being with family and friends, etc., and not being very attentive to email lists (or the internet generally). I would also not be surprised if there were those concerned about publicly posting a comment about the war, and I would want to be respectful of that. It does not matter that I believe or would like to believe and convince them, and everyone, that there is nothing to be concerned about raising one's voice, for even if there is nothing to be concerned about there are those who wish not to speak and to coerce speech is not necessarily better than to silence it. I have found myself flooded with email about the war, but I do wonder, as Nils asks, whether the internet will matter in the case of this war. If, in fact, the fighting begins, one may want to say that it has not and will not. But the internet will matter in other ways, even if its collective outpourings do not succeed in bringing peace and avoiding war. There are the perhaps mundane ways, such as those mentioned in a USA Today article (http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-03-18-iraq-internet_x.htm) concerning web-based news coverage of the war, and we should keep in mind that television had a significant role to play in U.S. public opinion about the war in Vietnam. Perhaps the internet will have similar consequences and at a more rapid pace than did the older medium. And there are the incredibly meaningful ways in which the internet might matter, by allowing families and friends to be in contact, as I have witnessed with my colleague at the university whose son is in the military and was ordered to Kuwait a couple of weeks ago. That the "deadline" set by the U.S. for Saddam Hussein to leave Iraq has passed and that there has not been immediate and massive military action is at least a glimmer of continued hope, and false though it may be, I'll take it. There is little available at the moment but hope for peace. Be well and be safe, Sj At 2:18 AM +0000 3/20/03, Nils Zurawski wrote:
David,
at 2.10 am 3/20/2003 I am checking my email to find your posting.. which list approriate or not.. touched me... the deadline has passed and for weeks no one listened... to no protest to no official to no inspector... nada... I am angry, fearful, outraged about this.... pro peace - certainly not a friend of Saddam... and his philantropists of earlier years... Reagan and Bush 1..... so yes the INternet has helped to spread the word, get people on the street... but did it really help to prevent the war .. or to rather blame it on them afterwards... I am not sure... we are certainly not anymore in the realm of the unknown.. but what did we win... sorry for the fatalism here... when the first shot will be fired... collegues of mine will be getting a phone call to get their butts in gear to rush to the newsroom to cover the whole thing...online... as if somebody cares in Germany at this time of the day... I may be covering for them tommorrow... despite a week off..... so that is the Internet as well.... seem to have lost my clue here... anyway... I am with David, but sceptical if the INterent really does make a change.. or only for us... that we fell better... disillusioned... nilz
_______________________________________________ Air-l mailing list Air-l@aoir.org http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l
I watch the brief bomb-run over Baghdad and feel bummed. It has happened, and I'm seeing it on TV. But you know what? Tom Brokaw can't hear how sad I am, and Dan Rather certainly cannot hear my rants. If the internet makes even a wee bit of difference, it's right here, right now. Maybe I can't stop the *war* with e-mail, but I certainly can voice my extreme disapproval of Bush and all his heinous actions, and have it, hopefully, recorded in the aoir archives. It's a tiny bit of history, but one that I want to help shape, so that when some geeky studenten like me comes along twenty years from now, he/she won't say, "there was a war going on and nobody was talking about it, speaking out. How could they have been so oblivious, so blind, or even worse, silent?" peace, peace, peace, robert
What's interesting is the diversity of groups that I'm subscribed to, which ones are talking about the war, and how. This conversational diversity is, as many on this list have written about eloquently and studied extensively, an Internet phenomenon. But underlying David's question seemed to be a recognition of the slippage from interest group or occupational resource to "community". Perhaps the air-l community turned out to not behave quite the way we expect communities to behave. I sensed a question coming out to the list about what kind of community air-l is - "is it the community that is worth the emotional energy I'm investing here"? In my experience, this happens whenever one invests a lot of time in a project, as I know air-l exec do with the list. It's natural consequence of spending a lot of time and energy interacting with people and trying to make our projects successful. Our increasing work-life integration (driven by ICTs) makes us demand more of our professional relationships. But to me, the silence, and David's question, just reinforced the things I already feel about air-l: * It's highly professionalised * It's very North American Into this picture of the air-l community feeds the other information... the preponderance of methodological research questions, requests for stats (the overall displacement of politics in the u.s. empirical social science tradition), off-list complaints about the careerism of AOIR conference delegates from people who always complain about that sort of thing, etc. None of this is really a problem to me, because, as Steve and others have noted, there are plenty of other places to be talking. But it does form my framework for not expecting air-l to talk about the war, nor expecting to find it a very useful place to talk about it. My picture of the list hopefully indicates that air-l is not a "haven of on-topicness" in any serendipitous way, but rather constructs its topics and community to facilitate certain kinds of conversations at the expense of others. Again, I'm not complaining about this, it certainly serves its purpose extremely well and I gain a relatively large amount of useful information from it. But I don't ever feel like I might (or would want to) engage air-l in the dialogues on the political implications of ICTs that I seek on other lists. The larger question that follows from this is whether this is the sort of list AOIR people want. No right answers in this conundrum: the "benefits" we gain from our environment of highly specific, sophisticated discussion groups is not free, it comes at the expense of other kinds of conversations with other kinds of people and other kinds of action. So, does air-l want to make a difference to the invasion (I can't bring myself to call it a war), and if so, what could that difference be? Would trying to make that difference damage the other functions of the list? Would it be worth it? peace, Danny Steve Jones wrote on 20/3/03 3:06 PM:
I would not be at all surprised if many, maybe most, subscribers to air-l are on other lists in which the conversation is non-stop about the war (regardless of whether that is "on topic" for those lists). Perhaps air-l is a haven of on-topic-ness. Maybe very few people are paying attention to air-l right now. Maybe, as I have seen with some of my students, some people are "warred out" and don't wish to talk about it. I also expect that people are otherwise engaged about this war in ways _not_ involving the internet, whether they are seeking peace or not when it comes to this war. And there are likely many people right now seeking news, being with family and friends, etc., and not being very attentive to email lists (or the internet generally).
I would also not be surprised if there were those concerned about publicly posting a comment about the war, and I would want to be respectful of that. It does not matter that I believe or would like to believe and convince them, and everyone, that there is nothing to be concerned about raising one's voice, for even if there is nothing to be concerned about there are those who wish not to speak and to coerce speech is not necessarily better than to silence it.
I have found myself flooded with email about the war, but I do wonder, as Nils asks, whether the internet will matter in the case of this war.
Danny and David At 11:30 PM 3/20/2003 +1200, you wrote:
"is it the community that is worth the emotional energy I'm investing here"?
we have a lot of communities not online that we engage in in similar ways too - there is something about multiple spaces, the investment and the lack thereof, and the varied degrees of social etc accountability as well as the varying degrees of caution with which we need to inhabit these space (varieties of surveillances and consequences faced by some people more than others) that keeps some types of discussions from happening in some of these communities... but maybe i'm not making sense. r p.s. the snow's gone and i dont know how to bury my head under concrete - but am considering some options. Radhika Gajjala _______________________ http://www.cyberdiva.org
radhika, while i understand your desire to find a subterranean headspace, i'd suggest staying above ground, whether the ground is snow or concrete. i think i speak for many when i say we need your voice now more than ever. peace. =) jillana, keep forwarding. i have benefited from so many posts on air-l, especially from robert, who seems to find all the most interesting nodes of cyberspace. i have used these posts to better understand what is happening today and what will most likely happen tomorrow, have integrated them into my lectures and research, and have found myself using them as spring boards to explore more. there's no need or use for us to shut down now. danny's post was right on target and he raises all kinds of questions that can take us years to answer collectively. i agree that air-l has in the past been very north american but this doesn't have to be the case, and i believe it is changing swiftly. it seems to me that the list is getting more and more international and i've heard reports from the conference committee that air 4.0 has attracted proposals from a larger range of countries than previous conferenes. (please correct me, someone, if i'm wrong, or, better yet, give us some numbers if possible.) speaking as an american, the mainstream media that surrounds me has gone into hyper pro-war mode so the more diverse coverage, perspectives, and ideas that can potentially emerge from communities like air-l, the better in my book. danny also characterized air-l as highly professional and mentioned the careerism of its participants. although i call air my home conference and spend much time learning from air-l, i would have to agree somewhat with this comment and am wondering if and how it can be changed. most of us on this list are scholars and artists and activists and technologists and just plain freaks (a term of affection in my book), but all of us are human (any bots out there?) and i personally don't see that as a conflict. with this in mind, there seems a lot we -- as academics and as human beings -- can do within a forum like air-l: we can continue to educate and share ideas with one another, ideas that may not be covered in mainstream media; we can continue to post emails describing various actions -- online and offline, anti-war and pro-war (anyone following clear channel's sponsorship of pro-war rallies? crazy) -- being organized as a response to the war; we can ask the conference committee to consider organizing some kind of special roundtable discussion/s on matters on the war, globalization, and digital technologies; we can even be so bold as to consider some kind of resolution similar to that passed recently by the Association of American Geographers. i'm not assuming that everyone on this list is against this war. indeed, in the last 24 hours i've received a number of emails offlist deriding my post, calling me a communist (haven't heard that insult in a while, how bush sr, no?). in an ideal world, such posts would be sent to the list rather than directly to my inbox. peace, peace, peace, david
While I do feel AoIR and air-l are communities, I don't feel that they are one community, and further don't feel that we get what we need from any one community. The interesting question that Danny initially asks, that I've been interested in for a very long time, is to do with our expectations for community. Should we expect discussion of the war, silence about it, or ignorance of it, how do those expectations come about and how do they change? How do we get what we need/want from communities to which we belong, and how do those needs/wants change? I particularly appreciate your follow-up, Danny, as you've not just asked the question but tried to answer it from your perspective. My own perspective matches much of your own. It's important to note that all conversations occur in some sense at the expense of others, in part because when a voice is raised it is difficult to raise others without causing a din, but mainly because such is time (itself an _enormously_ under-studied matter in internet studies, the cost of a focus on space) that as conversations go on, if they are to be conversations, things that might have been said pass by or change. The question of difference...enormously important, for as Danny notes there are multiple values at work and at stake. Right now it is more important than the other questions that can be taken up later. I am hopeful that all who want to make a difference in the world at this moment are engaged in so doing, and if air-l or AoIR can make a difference I am hopeful that it will, the cost of that difference to either notwithstanding at all. Sj At 11:30 PM +1200 3/20/03, Danny Butt wrote:
What's interesting is the diversity of groups that I'm subscribed to, which ones are talking about the war, and how. This conversational diversity is, as many on this list have written about eloquently and studied extensively, an Internet phenomenon.
But underlying David's question seemed to be a recognition of the slippage from interest group or occupational resource to "community". Perhaps the air-l community turned out to not behave quite the way we expect communities to behave. I sensed a question coming out to the list about what kind of community air-l is - "is it the community that is worth the emotional energy I'm investing here"?
In my experience, this happens whenever one invests a lot of time in a project, as I know air-l exec do with the list. It's natural consequence of spending a lot of time and energy interacting with people and trying to make our projects successful. Our increasing work-life integration (driven by ICTs) makes us demand more of our professional relationships.
But to me, the silence, and David's question, just reinforced the things I already feel about air-l:
* It's highly professionalised * It's very North American
Into this picture of the air-l community feeds the other information... the preponderance of methodological research questions, requests for stats (the overall displacement of politics in the u.s. empirical social science tradition), off-list complaints about the careerism of AOIR conference delegates from people who always complain about that sort of thing, etc.
None of this is really a problem to me, because, as Steve and others have noted, there are plenty of other places to be talking. But it does form my framework for not expecting air-l to talk about the war, nor expecting to find it a very useful place to talk about it. My picture of the list hopefully indicates that air-l is not a "haven of on-topicness" in any serendipitous way, but rather constructs its topics and community to facilitate certain kinds of conversations at the expense of others. Again, I'm not complaining about this, it certainly serves its purpose extremely well and I gain a relatively large amount of useful information from it. But I don't ever feel like I might (or would want to) engage air-l in the dialogues on the political implications of ICTs that I seek on other lists.
The larger question that follows from this is whether this is the sort of list AOIR people want. No right answers in this conundrum: the "benefits" we gain from our environment of highly specific, sophisticated discussion groups is not free, it comes at the expense of other kinds of conversations with other kinds of people and other kinds of action.
So, does air-l want to make a difference to the invasion (I can't bring myself to call it a war), and if so, what could that difference be? Would trying to make that difference damage the other functions of the list? Would it be worth it?
peace,
Danny
Steve Jones wrote on 20/3/03 3:06 PM:
I would not be at all surprised if many, maybe most, subscribers to air-l are on other lists in which the conversation is non-stop about the war (regardless of whether that is "on topic" for those lists). Perhaps air-l is a haven of on-topic-ness. Maybe very few people are paying attention to air-l right now. Maybe, as I have seen with some of my students, some people are "warred out" and don't wish to talk about it. I also expect that people are otherwise engaged about this war in ways _not_ involving the internet, whether they are seeking peace or not when it comes to this war. And there are likely many people right now seeking news, being with family and friends, etc., and not being very attentive to email lists (or the internet generally).
I would also not be surprised if there were those concerned about publicly posting a comment about the war, and I would want to be respectful of that. It does not matter that I believe or would like to believe and convince them, and everyone, that there is nothing to be concerned about raising one's voice, for even if there is nothing to be concerned about there are those who wish not to speak and to coerce speech is not necessarily better than to silence it.
I have found myself flooded with email about the war, but I do wonder, as Nils asks, whether the internet will matter in the case of this war.
_______________________________________________ Air-l mailing list Air-l@aoir.org http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l
I have two different, and probably related reactions to the discussion about how the internet is affecting the way we experience current political situation. One topic is, how is blogging affecting the available information. Currently, I am reading Kevin Sites blog, http://www.kevinsites.net/. Kevin is a CNN reporter currently in Northern Iraq. This site is his personal blog. A second site that I am following is 'Where is Raed?', http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/. This is a blog from a person living in Baghdad. This relates to the article posted here a while ago U.S. citizens starting to get more news from non-U.S. sites. I am wondering to what extent AoIRers are following blogs like this, and what other blogs people recommendd. The second topic I think of in terms of Larry Niven's famous 1973 short story, Flash Crowd. (See the Wikipedia article http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_Crowd) I received several emails about anti-war activities within two hours of the bombing in Iraq starting. This has facilitated 'Flash Crowds' of demonstrators to mobilize in ways not possible. Within a day, I had received an online petition, http://www.moveon.org/declaration/ I am interested in others thoughts and experiences with Flash Crowds as well as 'flash' online petitions. Aldon __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop! http://platinum.yahoo.com
On Thu, 20 Mar 2003, Aldon Hynes wrote:
One topic is, how is blogging affecting the available information.
yeah, and how bloggers are delivering news from the streets, that is, until they are arrested. dig: http://www.livejournal.com/users/hepkitten/230659.html david
Blogs have been/are reliable, frequently updated, interesting sources of information and activism opportunities. Not all are produced by writers about to get arrested or taking to the streets (obviously). I am enjoying Matt Bivens' Nation sponsored blog. He finds and links to many US atrocities, all with a sense of humor. http://www.thenation.com/outrage/ Best, Jillana Not of the "offOn 3/21/03 12:27 PM, "david silver" <dsilver@u.washington.edu> wrote:
On Thu, 20 Mar 2003, Aldon Hynes wrote:
One topic is, how is blogging affecting the available information.
yeah, and how bloggers are delivering news from the streets, that is, until they are arrested. dig:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/hepkitten/230659.html
david
_______________________________________________ Air-l mailing list Air-l@aoir.org http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l
Greetings all, Will other Air-l'ers be at PCA/ACA this next week? If so, would you be interested in meeting for lunch or dinner during the conference? Please contact me off-list and I will try to coordinate a gathering of some sort! I'll be presenting as part of the Video Games Studies Area and I notice that there's also a series of presentations on Electronic Communication and Culture... Anyone interested in checking out the extensive and varied programming, point your browser at: http://www.popularculture.org/Program%20Pca.htm Best, Anna ______________________________________________________________ Anna M. Martinson <amartins@indiana.edu> Doctoral Candidate, IU SLIS President, BPM Chi Chapter http://php.indiana.edu/~amartins/home.html
participants (11)
-
Aldon Hynes -
Anna M. Martinson -
Danny Butt -
david silver -
DJ Smith -
Jillana Enteen -
Nils Zurawski -
noci -
radhika gajjala -
robert m. tynes -
Steve Jones